Mission and Ecumenism in the Global Village. 100 Years after the Conference of Edinburgh

44th International Ecumenical Seminar

The year 2010 marks the centenary of the ecumenical movement, which began, significantly, at the World Missionary Conference in Edinburgh. Concerned that disputes from missionaries' homelands were being imported to new soil and damaging the credibility of the gospel there, the first efforts to repair unity among Protestants had a distinctive evangelical and missionary purpose.

A hundred years later, Orthodox and Roman Catholics have joined the ecumenical movement, various churches have pulled out of it, and innumerable ecumenical organizations have formed at both the international and local level. In the 44th annual Summer Seminar of the Institute for Ecumenical Research questions about the interrelationship of mission and ecumenism will be pursued. How has the understanding of mission changed in the past hundred years? Mission has attempted to shed its colonialist influences, and now people who were formerly the objects of mission have become the subjects. At the same time, traditionally Christian lands are increasingly secular. How have relationships changed between the churches on different continents? Is justice or evangelization the main content of mission today? And what does all this have to do with ecumenical efforts to achieve the visible unity of the church? Are mission and ecumenism - and which mission and ecumenism - still linked or have they gone their separate ways? Is the unity of the church still essential to defend the credibility of the gospel? Is the mission of the church aided by ecumenical cooperation?

English and German are the main languages of the Seminar. Lectures and discussion will be simultaneously translated into and out of these languages. Participants may also express themselves in French in the plenary discussions. A French language discussion group will be set up if there is a sufficient number of French-speaking participants.  

For more detailed information on programme and costs, please visit the website of the Institute for Ecumenical Research, or contact Sarah Hinlicky Wilson sarah.hinlickywilson[at]ecumenical-institute.org or Elke Leypold at strasecum[at]ecumenical-institute.org.